Atom Or RSS?

I’m thinking of providing XML feeds from my two photographic websites, cazphoto.co.uk and rugbypix.com. I have a clean sheet, and could either use the Atom standard or RSS. So which is best? Are there any significant differences? I’ve heard rumours that Atom is somehow “better” but RSS is more widespread. It’s the old VHS vs Betamax chestnut rearing its head again! And I don’t really want to be on the wrong end of the seesaw in the future.

I suppose I could take the line that, if it’s good enough for the BBC, it’s good enough for me, and go with RSS. Although plenty of sites such as Blogger provide their feeds as Atom.

Do any of you have a choice over which format you use? And if so, which one did you plump for and why? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts

3 Responses to Atom Or RSS?

For a regular person reading feeds, the various versions of RSS and Atom should offer similar experiences. At a technical level, RSS is focused on making simple syndication very easy, and is the older and more widely-published format. Atom is a web standard from the IETF, one of the standards bodies that’s helped define the web, and is more focused on enabling both reading and writing of content with a single format. At Six Apart, all of our tools support both formats equally.